The MFA for Poets and Writers program has announced that writer and scholar of literature Juliana Spahr, recipient of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, will be the second Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence and will visit the UMass campus Oct. 19-22.

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Spahr’s residency will include three two-hour craft talks for MFA students, featuring lectures, presentations, group discussion and writing exercises. Spahr will also give a reading on Oct. 22 at 6p.m. in Old Chapel as part of the MFA’s Visiting Writers Series. The reading is free and open to the public.

The Writer in Residency project is made possible through a gift from UMass alumni Merry and Daniel Glosband. Each year, it alternates between bringing a prose writer and a poet to campus for a week to engage with graduate and undergraduate students and to further develop their understanding of craft.

“It doesn’t happen often that you invite a poet to do a reading and then just weeks later, that same poet wins a Pulitzer Prize,” Jenny Adams, chair of the English department, says, “but I have long since ceased to be surprised by my creative writing colleagues and the talented company they keep.”

“Julianna Spahr is a world-class poet, and the opportunity to work with her in multiple craft sessions is sure to be transformative for the talented poets and writers of the UMass MFA in Creative Writing,” says Jeff Parker, novelist and MFA program director. “Huge thanks to Dan and Merry Glosband for making it possible to bring a poet of Spahr’s caliber here. In just its second year, the Glosband Writer in Residence program is already well established in the tradition of bringing the most interesting and vital contemporary writers to campus for deep engagement with our students.”

Spahr’s “Ars Poeticas” received the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her 2015 poetry collection, “That Winter the Wolf Came,” takes as its concern the global spread of political struggles located at the intersection of ecological and economic catastrophe. She also publishes literary prose—"Army of Lovers,” co-written with David Buuck, tells the story of two mediocre poets who are attempting to write poetry in a time when poetry’s importance is on the decline. Her most recent book of scholarship, “Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment,” explores the ambiguous and disconcerting role that literature plays in upholding the modern nation-state. She was also the editor, with Claudia Rankine, of “American Women Poets in the 21st Century.”

More information about the Merry and Daniel Glosband Visiting Writer in Residence can be found on the English department website.